Review of
True story of the brutality of oppression
Eva and Inge are two German assimilated Jewish identical twin sisters and the story opens with them at a performance of the Berliner Philharmonie in 1932. Before the music starts there is an interruption when a small man appears in a balcony box and is cheered. That man is Adolph Hitler, the leader of a German political party that is rapidly growing in strength and a man that many Germans see as the potential savior of a nation that is mired in the depth of the depression.
Their father Oskar is
a jeweler with a great deal of knowledge of diamonds and his wife Helene shares
his high level of loyalty to the German nation. Oskar owns a jewelry shop and
is doing quite well despite the deep economic problems in the country. Eva and
Inge are best friends with Trudy, an Aryan girl their age and they are so close
that Trudy is one of the few people that tell the twins apart.
This book is the
story of that Jewish family as Germany stepwise descends into a horrific place
to be a Jew. Old Aryan friends are forced to ignore them and more and more of
their Jewish neighbors are suddenly disappearing. Finally, when the
Kristallnacht takes place, Oskar and Helene are convinced that they must leave
Germany and the whole family embarks on a dangerous journey that takes them
westward from Berlin to Belgium.
After the war breaks
out the Nazi terror follows them so they leave once again on an extended
journey down through Spain then Portugal to Brazil and eventually settling in
South Africa. The war in Europe has ended and now they find themselves
observing the implementation of apartheid, the brutal control of the majority
black population of the country. Having experienced so much hatred themselves,
they dislike the treatment of blacks but are uncertain how to react, as they
once again feel powerless against the strength of a police state.
As the blurb on the
back cover indicates, this story is to some extent a biography of the author’s
grandparents, who were Jews that fled Europe when Hitler rose to power. The
events of persecution described in this book are historically accurate and
there were many people that risked their lives to aid Jews. It is unfortunate
that so many of them are lost to history as they were also victims of the
deadly plague of Nazism.
This is a great story
of struggle, loss, triumph and uncertainty as the family manages to stay
together through traveling thousands of miles under great danger and find a
home in a strange land. The interaction between the South African policeman and
the Jew Max is a microcosm of the pressures of dealing with the power of a
police state expressed in the body of a single man that has the right to
imprison you without charges.
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